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Shōjo manga
The term refers to manga marketed to a female audience roughly between the ages of 10 and 18. The name romanizes the Japanese '''少女 (shōjo), literally: "little girl". Shōjo manga covers many subjects in a variety of narrative and graphic styles, from historical drama to science fiction - often with a strong focus on human and romantic relationships and emotions.Toku, Masami, editor. 2005. "Shojo Manga: Girl Power!" Chico, CA: Flume Press/California State University Press. ISBN 1-886226-10-5. See also http://www.csuchico.edu/pub/cs/spring_06/feature_03.html. Accessed 2007-09-22. Strictly speaking, shōjo manga does not comprise a style or a genre per se, but rather indicates a target demographic.Thorn, Matt (2001) "Shôjo Manga—Something for the Girls", The Japan Quarterly, Vol. 48, No. 3 Thorn, Matt (2004) What Shôjo Manga Are and Are Not: A Quick Guide for the Confused, last modified December 18, 2006 Examples include Cardcaptor Sakura, Fushigi Yuugi, Sailor Moon, Romeo x Juliet, and Tokyo Mew Mew. History 's groundbreaking 1934 shōjo manga, The Mysterious Clover]] Japanese magazines specifically for girls, known as shōjo magazines, first appeared in 1903 with the founding of , and continued with others such as (1906) and the long-running (1908).The Kikuyō Town Library . Retrieved on 2008-09-15. Simple, single-page manga had begun to appear in these magazines by 1910, and by the 1930s more sophisticated humor-strips had become an essential feature of most girls' magazines. The most popular manga, Katsuji Matsumoto's Kurukuru Kurumi-chan (くるくるクルミちゃん), debuted on the pages of Shōjo no tomo (少女の友) in 1938.Thorn, Matt (2006) "Pre-World War II Shōjo Manga and Illustrations" matt-thorn.com As World War II progressed, however, "comics, perhaps regarded as frivolous, began to disappear".Schodt, Frederik L. (1983) Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics, Kodansha International Postwar shōjo manga, such as Shosuke Kurakane's popular Anmitsu Hime,Yonezawa, Yoshihiro, ed. (1991)Kodomo no Shōwa-shi: Shōjo manga no sekai I, Shōwa 20 nen - 37 nen (子供の昭和史──少女マンガの世界 I 昭和20年〜37年 "A Children's History of Showa-Era Japan: The World of Shōjo Manga I, 1945-1962") Bessatsu Taiyō series. Tokyo: Heibonsha initially followed the pre-war pattern of simple humor-strips. But Osamu Tezuka's postwar revolution, introducing intense drama and serious themes to children's manga, spread quickly to shōjo manga, particularly after the enormous success of his seminal Ribon no kishi (リボンの騎士 Princess Knight). Until the mid-1960s males vastly outnumbered the handful of females (for example: Toshiko Ueda, Hideko Mizuno, Masako Watanabe, and Miyako Maki) amongst the artists working on shōjo manga. Many, such as Tetsuya Chiba,Thorn, Matt (2005) "The Moto Hagio Interview" The Comics Journal #269. functioned as rookies, waiting for an opportunity to move over to shōnen (少年 "boys'") manga. Chiba asked his wife about girls' feelings for research for his manga. At this time, conventional job-opportunities for females did not include becoming a mangaka.Toku, Masami (2007) "Shojo Manga! Girls' Comics! A Mirror of Girls’ Dreams" Mechademia 2 pp.22-23 Adapting Tezuka's dynamic style to shōjo manga (which had always been domestic in nature) proved challenging. According to Thorn: While some chose to simply create longer humor-strips, others turned to popular girls' novels of the day as a model for melodramatic shōjo manga. These manga featured sweet, innocent pre-teen heroines, torn from the safety of family and tossed from one perilous circumstance to another, until finally rescued (usually by a kind, handsome young man) and re-united with their families.Thorn, Matt (2008) "The Multi-Faceted Universe of Shōjo Manga", presented at Le manga, 60 ans après..., Paris, March 15. These early shōjo manga almost invariably had pre-adolescent girls as both heroines and readers. Unless they used a fantastic setting (as in Princess Knight) or a backdrop of a distant time or place, romantic love for the heroine remained essentially taboo. But the average age of the readership rose, and its interests changed. In the mid-1960s one of the few female artists in the field, Yoshiko Nishitani, began to draw stories featuring contemporary Japanese teenagers in love. This signaled a dramatic transformation of the genre.Yonezawa, Yoshihiro, ed. (1991)Kodomo no Shōwa-shi: Shōjo manga no sekai II, Shōwa 38 nen - 64 nen (子供の昭和史──少女マンガの世界 II 昭和38年〜64年 "A Children's History of Showa-Era Japan: The World of Shōjo Manga II, 1963-1989") Bessatsu Taiyō series. Tokyo: HeibonshaThorn, Matt (2005) "The Magnificent Forty-Niners" The Comics Journal #269. Between 1950 and 1969, increasingly large audiences for manga emerged in Japan with the solidification of its two main marketing genres, shōnen manga aimed at boys and shōjo manga aimed at girls. Between roughly 1969 and 1971 a flood of young female manga artists transformed the genre again. Some, including Hagio Moto, Yumiko Oshima, and Keiko Takemiya, became known as the hana no nijū yon nen gumi (花の２４年組, Year 24 Group, so named from the approximate year of birth many of them shared:Shōwa 24, or 1949). This loosely-defined group experimented with content and form, inventing such new sub-genres as Shōnen-ai, and earning the long-maligned shōjo manga unprecedented critical praise. Other female artists of the same generation, such as Riyoko Ikeda, Yukari Ichijo, and Sumika Yamamoto, garnered unprecedented popular support with such hits (respectively) as Berusaiyu no bara (ベルサイユのばら, "The Rose of Versailles"), Dezainaa (デザイナー, "Designer"), and Eesu wo nerae! (エースをねらえ！, "Aim for the Ace!"). Schodt, Frederik L. 1986. Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics. Tokyo: Kodansha. ISBN 978-0870117527.Gravett, Paul. 2004. Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics. New York: Harper Design, pages 78-80 ISBN 1-85669-391-0.Lent, 2001, op. cit., pp. 9-10. Since the mid-1970s, women have created the vast majority of shōjo manga - notable exceptions include Mineo Maya and Shinji Wada). From 1975 to shōjo manga continued to develop stylistically while simultaneously branching out into different but overlapping subgenres.Ōgi, Fusami 2004. "Female subjectivity and shōjo (girls) manga (Japanese comics): shōjo in Ladies' Comics and Young Ladies' Comics." Journal of Popular Culture, 36(4):780-803. Major sub-genres include romance, science fiction, fantasy, magical girls, yaoi, and "Ladies Comics" (in Japanese, redisu レディース, redikomi レディコミ, and josei 女性).Gravett, Paul. 2004. Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics. NY: Harper Design. ISBN 1-85669-391-0. p. 8. Schodt, Frederik L. 1996. Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga. Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge Press. ISBN 978-1880656235. Meaning and spelling As shōjo literally means "girl" in Japanese, the equivalent of the western usage will generally include the medium : girls' manga (少女漫画 shōjo manga), or anime for girls (少女向けアニメ shōjo-muke anime). The parallel terms shōnen, seinen, and josei also occur in the categorisation of manga and anime, with similar qualification. Though the terminology originates with the Japanese publishers, cultural differences with the West mean that labelling in English tends to vary wildly, with the types often confused and mis-applied. Due to vagaries in the romanization of Japanese, publishers may transcribe 少女 (written しょうじょ in hiragana) in a wide variety of ways. By far the most common form, shoujo , follows English phonology , preserves the spelling, and requires only ASCII input. The Hepburn romanization shōjo uses a macron for the long vowel, though the prevalence of Latin-1 fonts often results in a circumflex instead, as in shôjo. Many English-language texts just ignore long vowels, using shojo, however this is sometimes discouraged due to potential confusion with 処女 (shojo, literally: "virgin") as well as other possible meanings. Finally, transliteraters may use Nihon-shiki-type mirroring of the kana spelling: syôjyo, or syoujyo. Western adoption Fans in the West have adopted a wide range of Japanese anime and manga terminology, however the strong stylistic and thematic similarities between a sector of shōjo works has led to regarding them as a genre or style, sometimes with an attempt to assign it by degrees. This has led to western fans classifying a wide variety of titles as shōjo, even though their Japanese creators would label them differently. Anything non-offensive and featuring female characters may class as shōjo, such as the light seinen comedy manga and anime Azumanga Daioh.[http://web.mit.edu/anime/www/Showings/Azumanga_Daioh.shtml Azumanga Daioh mistakenly identified as 'shōjo comedy'] on the MIT Anime Club website, last modified August 19, 2004 Similarly, as romance has become a common element of many shōjo works, any title with romance, such as the shōnen Love Hina''Chobot, Jessica Shojo Showdown, defending choice of Love Hina as #5 in the 'Top Ten Shōjo Manga', ''IGN, December 2, 2005 or the seinen Oh My Goddess! tend to get mislabeled. In addition Westerners often declare that particularly violent, gory, or sexually explicit works "cannot possibly" be shōjo, or disbelieve that the producers of shōnen-ai titles target a market of girls rather than homosexual men. This confusion also extends beyond the fan community; articles aimed at the mainstream also widely misrepresent the terms. In an introduction to anime and manga, Jon Courtenay Grimwood writes: Takahashi has become a famed shōnen mangaka, but Maison Ikkoku, one of her few seinen titles and serialised in Big Comic Spirits, aimed at males in their 20s. Matt Thorn, who has made a career out of studying girls' comics, attempts to clarify the matter by explaining that "shôjo manga are manga published in shôjo magazines (as defined by their publishers)". Publishers and stores have problems retailing shōjo: unsure of the "right" way to spell the word. Licensees such as Dark Horse Comics have misidentified several of the seinen titles, and in particular manga and anime aimed at a younger audience in Japan is often considered "inappropriate" for minors in the US.Shojo Update:Your Comments and Our Answers, ICV2, August 23, 2001 In this way licensees often either voluntarily censor titles or re-market them towards an older audience. In the less conservative European markets, content that might be heavily edited or cut in an English-language release is often present in French, German and other translated editions. As one effect of these variations, US companies have moved to use the borrowed words that have gained name-value in fan communities, but separate them from the Japanese meaning. In their shōjo manga range, publisher VIZ Media attempt a re-appropriation of the term, providing the definition: The desire to disassociate the word from its meaning, "girl", seems largely driven by fear of putting off potential new readers, particularly male ones. Manga and anime labeled as "shōjo" need not interest only young girls, and some titles gain a following outside the traditional audience. For instance, Frederik L. Schodt identifies Banana Fish by Akimi Yoshida as: Such successful "crossover" titles remain the exception rather than the rule, however: the archetypal shōjo manga magazine Hana to Yume has a readership 95% female, with a majority aged 17 or under. The popularity of romantic shōjo manga in America has encouraged Harlequin to release manga-styled romantic comics.Harlequin Ginger Blossom manga Circulation figures The reported average circulations for some of the top-selling shōjo manga magazines in 2007 included: For comparison, circulations for the top-selling magazines in other categories for 2007 included: (Source for all circulation figures: Japan Magazine Publishers Association [http://www.j-magazine.or.jp/data_001/index.html Japan Magazine Publishers Association Magazine Data 2007]. The publication, which relies on information provided by publishers, categorizes the magazine ''Cookie'' as josei, but Shueisha's "S-MANGA.NET" site clearly categorizes that magazine as shōjo, hence its categorization here.) Shōjo magazines in Japan In a strict sense, shōjo manga refers to a story serialized in a shōjo manga magazine (a magazine marketed to girls and young women). The list below contains past and current Japanese shōjo manga magazines, grouped according to their publishers. Such magazines can appear on a variety of schedules, including bi-weekly (Margaret, Hana to Yume, Shōjo Comic), monthly (Ribon, Bessatsu Margaret, Bessatsu Friend, LaLa), bi-monthly (Deluxe Margaret, LaLa DX, The Dessert), and quarterly (Cookie BOX, Unpoko). Weekly shōjo magazines, common in the 1960s and 1970s, had disappeared by the early 1980s. Shueisha *''Ribon'' (monthly, 1955- ) *''Ribon Original'' *''Cobalt'' *''Cookie'' *''Cookie BOX'' (quarterly) *''Margaret'' (bi-weekly, 1963- ) *''Bessatsu Margaret'' (monthly) *''The Margaret'' *''Deluxe Margaret'' (bi-monthly) Kodansha * Nakayoshi * Shōjo Friend * Bessatsu Friend * Dessert * The Dessert * Kiss * Be Love Shogakukan *''Ciao'' *''Chu Chu'' *''Shōjo Comic'' *''Betsucomi'' *''Petit Comic'' *''Cheese!'' *''Pochette'' Hakusensha *''Hana to Yume'' *''Bessatsu Hana to Yume'' *''LaLa'' *''LaLa DX'' *''Melody'' Akita Shoten * Princess * Princess Gold * Petit Princess * Mystery Bonita * Susperia Mystery * Renai MAX Kadokawa Shoten *''Asuka'' Web magazine *''Manga Airport'' Shinshokan *''Unpoko'' Shōjo magazines outside Japan Viz Media *''Shojo Beat, a shōjo manga magazine published in North America from 2005 to 2009 See also * Bishōjo, literally "pretty young girl" * Shoujocon, a former anime convention, held annually from 2000–2003 * Magical girl: a subgenre of shōjo manga * Shōnen manga: manga intended for boys * Seinen manga: manga intended for adult men * Josei manga: manga intended for adult women * List of Shōjo manga magazines * Manga * History of manga References * Ultimate Manga Guide (zip), version 13.6, last modified July 31, 2004 * Shojo Anime List, last modified February 14, 1995 * Napier, Susan J., ''Anime: From Akira to Howl's Moving Castle (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) * Thorn, Matt (2001) "Shôjo Manga—Something for the Girls", The Japan Quarterly, Vol. 48, No. 3 * The Boys of Shojo Manga, article by Shaenon K. Garrity * Shamoon, Deborah "Revolutionary Romance: The Rose of Versailles and the Transformation of Shojo Manga" Mechademia Vol. 2, 2007 * Takahashi Mizuki "Opening the Closed World of Shojo Manga" Japanese Visual Culture Ed. Mark MacWilliams. ME Sharpe, 2008. Notes Category:Anime and manga terminology Category:Shōjo manga ar:شوجو ast:Shōjo manga ca:Shojo cs:Šódžo de:Shōjo es:Shōjo eo:Porknabinaj mangao kaj animeo fr:Shōjo gl:Shōjo ko:순정만화 id:Shōjo it:Shōjo he:שוג'ו hu:Sódzso ms:Shōjo nl:Shojo ja:少女漫画 pl:Shōjo pt:Shōjo ro:Shōjo ru:Сёдзё sk:Šódžo fi:Shōjo sv:Shōjo th:โชโจะ tr:Shōjo zh:少女漫画